


Blood Brothers

by lalejandra



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Best Friends, Blood Brothers, Cutting, Gen, Razors, Transformative Works Welcome, Weed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-06
Updated: 2011-12-06
Packaged: 2019-07-14 10:15:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16038386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: I'll keep moving through the dark with you in my heart, my blood brother.(--Bruce Springsteen)





	Blood Brothers

Spencer takes everything seriously. Okay, no, not everything, but he takes _Brendon_ seriously, and he always has, even when they were stupid teenagers. Brendon doesn't know how he'd've made it to real, actual adulthood without Spencer standing behind him, arms folded, mouth turned down, and he's only known Spencer since 2004.

Brendon tries not to think about Ryan these days, but sometimes, when Spencer's standing behind him with his arms crossed, Brendon wonders how Ryan could have ever given up the one person guaranteed to always take him seriously.

He says as much to Spencer one night when they're stoned. He says, "I could never give you up, man," and then he breathes out, holds the lighter to the pipe, and sucks in the biggest lungful of smoke he ca.n He says, around the smoke, his voice uneven, "I don't get how he did that."

Spencer makes a face and holds out his hand for the pipe and the lighter. "Shut up, Bren." He sucks in his own lungful of smoke, but doesn't pass the pipe back. Brendon counts -- two, three, five, ten, fourteen -- and finally Spencer blows the smoke out in a thin stream and takes another deep hit.

Brendon can be persistent. "I don't want this to be about him," he tells Spencer. The pipe is blown glass, done in shades of green. Brendon's always worried about crushing it and getting glass in the weed. But he's a rockstar, right? He can buy more weed. He can buy another pipe.

"So stop talking about him?" suggests Spencer on a rush of exhaling.

"I'm just saying, I don't get it. I never understood him," muses Brendon, "but this is, like, way far beyond, like, what anyone could understand. Like..." Brendon thinks about how Spencer is the steady beat through the whole show, every night, the way Spencer is always behind him or at his elbow, a steady beat through his _life_. "You're a steady beat through my life, man."

"Some people march to a different drummer," says Spencer, and when he starts to laugh, he rolls over a little, right off the couch and onto the table top, where two lone slices of pizza are in a box from earlier, and he _smushes them._ "Fuck, I love Canadian weed."

"The pizza is alone," says Brendon sadly.

Spencer reaches underneath himself to pull one of the slices of pizza out of the box. It's a slice with Canadian bacon -- _still called Canadian bacon in Canada!_ Brendon will never get over that -- and ham and pineapple and extra cheese and, somehow, for some reason, turkey meatballs.

"Now it's in my belly," Spencer tells him around a mouthful. "Never to be alone again."

"What if I'm alone?" asks Brendon. He doesn't feel sad, or like that is ever going to happen, but he thinks he sounds sad anyway, because Spencer sits up on top of the table. He is going to be so pissed if the grease from the last piece of pizza -- now _truly_ alone -- soaks through the box and makes a stain on the ass of his jeans. He will be pissed and Brendon will laugh and laugh.

"You're not alone." There's all their history beneath those words, and Brendon can feel it -- it holds him down. But Brendon wonders -- only sometimes, and not very often, and not very seriously -- if Ryan gave Spencer the option of coming with him, and Spencer turned him down. Maybe Spencer didn't want to tag along like someone's kid brother; maybe he wanted to be equal partners.

"I don't think I'm alone," Brendon assures him hastily, "but you know we're equal partners, right?"

"Are you proposing?" Spencer tries to eye him suspiciously, but it falls flat. He just looks stoned.

"Okay, you know you're an asshole, right? I'm trying to have a _moment_ , here." Brendon frowns at the floor. The carpet is this gross brown that looks really _adult_ , and Brendon keeps meaning to rip it out and put in something exciting -- Gabe's suggestion had been purple; Pete's suggestion had been white; Spencer's suggestion had been wooden flooring; nothing really felt right, though, and Brendon figures Sarah might want to be in charge of that anyway --

"Hey, Brendon." Spencer says it a couple more times, until Brendon looks up, looks at him. "Partners. In this together. I'm not going anywhere. And neither are you, right?"

Brendon nods. "I think I'm too sober," he says, and Spencer lets him change the subject, smoke more awesome Canadian weed, and then they find one of those "gaming" channels that's showing _Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure_ and all the commercials are for, like, _Resident Evil_ and Word of Warcraft and shit, and it's awesome.

A few days later, Spencer has his serious face on. It's the face he makes when he reads contracts, when he talks to his parents, when he has to ride along to the hospital because Brendon's done something stupid like almost get malaria or break his foot.

"Hey... did -- are you --" Brendon stops. Stops talking, stops moving, hovers in the doorway to the kitchen where Spencer's sitting at the table. He can't help but remember Spencer promising not to leave (not just leave to go visit his sisters, or leave to go back to his own house, but _leave_ ), and wondering if this is the one time, the first time, that Spencer breaks a promise to him.

"I forget sometimes that you need things to be real," Spencer tells him. He spills out a brown paper bag onto the kitchen table. "C'mere."

Brendon walks into the room. He'd been gunning for a Capri Sun -- it's his own house, he doesn't even have to hide it or anything, just keeps it in the fridge. Keeps one in the freezer at all times in case he wants to eat it with a spoon. Sometimes, because he's an adult and can do whatever he wants, he mixes one with vodka and drinks it from a glass. But really the packaging -- the straw, the squishiness -- is the draw. The packaging and the sugar.

But he forgoes the Capri Sun to sit at the table with Spence and look at what had been in the bag. Some alcohol wipes. A paper square -- no, a razor blade covered in paper. Neosporin. Gauze. Band-Aids with Hello Kitty on them.

"What..." Brendon drums his fingers on the table.

"Proof," says Spencer. He unwraps one of the alcohol wipes and swabs it over Brendon's left wrist. He does the same to his own wrist with the next one. Brendon... can sort of see where this is going, but doesn't really believe it until the third wipe cleans the razor blade. "You want me to make a speech or something first?"

"Spencer," says Brendon shakily, and he's worried that all his feelings are right on his face, out there for Spencer to see. He worries about that, and then remembers that Spencer's seen him at his worst, Spencer's puked in his hair, Spencer's taken him to the doctor for STD tests; Spencer taught him how to cook, figured out how to register his dog in California. Spencer is his best friend. Spencer's his back beat. But he still worries, because maybe these feelings are too pathetic; maybe this is it.

(Brendon wonders if, at some point, he will ever stop being afraid that people will see who he really is and decide he's not worth it. He thinks maybe he needs therapy or something, to try to get over the idea that people who like him don't really know him, because if they really knew him, _really_ , they wouldn't like him anymore. Like his parents. Like... everyone he'd ever met. Until Spencer.)

"We're brothers, man. I am never gonna leave you. Are you gonna leave me? Gonna go Diana Ross it up?" Spencer leans forward, holds out his wrist. "Blood brothers. Forever." He draws the razor over his wrist. It's slower than Brendon expected, and it takes a second try to get more than a few drops of blood.

Then Spencer hands him the razor, not bothering to wipe his blood off it. "You do it yourself," he explains, and Brendon gets it. It doesn't mean as much if someone does it for him. He stares down at his wrist, brown and pink, blue veins, weird lines, and wonders -- uncharitably, for only a split-second -- if Spencer had done this with Ryan as kids, if they were blood brothers, too. But it doesn't matter, does it? Even if they did, Ryan is the one who left Spencer, not the other way around. Because Spencer takes shit seriously.

Brendon draws the razor over his skin. He's always thought of the skin on his wrist as being thin, flimsy -- when he's thought of it at all -- but it takes a surprising amount of pressure to break the skin, and it hurts in a bright line, like a tattoo outline. He presses harder, waits for blood, then drops the razor onto its paper and holds his wrist out.

"Blood brothers, Spence. Forever."

Spencer holds his eyes while they push their wrists together, smearing the blood around, holding together. Spencer's skin is soft, and he's as tan as he ever gets, and he needs a hair cut. Brendon wishes he had some kind of insight into people -- but he doesn't, almost never is able to look into someone's eyes and know what they're thinking.

But Spencer is taking this seriously, Brendon can tell that, at least. Spencer is taking this seriously because he always takes Brendon seriously.

"Brothers," repeats Brendon softly, and he looks away, because he thinks he's gonna cry, and if he keeps looking at Spence, he's going to say something -- like, "I love you," or "Thanks for staying with me." He thinks Spencer knows, anyway, because when Spencer pulls his wrist away and presses gauze to Brendon's, he taps a finger on the base of Brendon's thumb, the thick, fleshy part, until Brendon looks up.

"I love you. Brothers," says Spencer. Brendon hears what he's not saying: _I choose you._ Brendon chooses him, too.

Brendon chooses Spencer to be his _real_ brother, so Brendon says it back, trips over the words a little, but gets them out. He knows all the terrible shit about Spencer, and all the good shit, too, and he likes _all of it_ ; maybe that's how Spencer feels about him. Good shit and bad shit and dumb shit and desperate need for love and approval -- maybe Spencer loves all of that because it all makes up one entity of Brendon.

"I-I -- yeah. I love you, Spence. Brothers."

"Good." Spencer sound satisfied, and doesn't say anything else as he presses gauze to his own wrist and then smears the Neosporin first on Brendon and then on himself. Then: "So here's what I'm thinking -- first we order a shitload of Chinese food. Then we get really stoned. Then -- and here's where my plan is genius, dude. Then we watch _Mulan_."

"That is fucking genius," Brendon tells him. "I'm in." It takes three Hello Kitty Band-Aids placed vertically to cover the line on his wrist. He thinks he might pull it off later and pick at the scab, make sure there'll be a scar -- proof he can see every day.

  



End file.
